Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming January 2017 22 photographers – one in particular who is our fantastic lead photographer – and the imagery in the magazine is simply superb. I think it’s probably the best in Macau. It’s not really a magazine that has a lot of words in it but the words we do have pack a punch. It is very artistic. We only have four issues so far and are making our fifth now but in four short issues our team has taken the magazine to an extraordinarily high standard. I expect through 2017 that standard will rise even higher. High Life will definitely be the most beautiful magazine in Macau if it isn’t already. BB: Can you talk a bit about the media talent in Macau and the challenges the industry faces in finding great people? AWS: That’s actually a real problem and we’re not the only industry that has this issue in Macau. You have to remember it was only a few short decades ago that Macau was little more than a small country town to be honest. It is to Macau’s credit that in the last decade in particular it has expanded and grown, incomes have risen and the offerings have become high end. But it takes generations for talent to develop. From generation to generation people need to be educated and it takes many years to instil certain attitudes and cultural beliefs and work ethics and so forth. So the human resource talent in Macau has lagged behind the growth of Macau – and media is no different. The number of really good journalists in Macau can be measured in the 10s, not the 100s, so it’s tough. We’ve been seeking out the very best in Macau but sometimes you do have to hire from outside Macau, use people from Hong Kong and the like. That’s our very last resort though – we do try to find talent from within Macau. Fortunately, as O Media becomes more and more well known, some of the talent is starting to gravitate to us which is great. BB: How does the media in Macau differ from the media in Hong Kong? AWS: Well the main thing is that there is no strong, established media ecosystem in Macau. In a big city like Hong Kong, the media industry is big enough to have separate companies providing separate services, so there will be companies that create content, companies that have well-established distribution networks, companies that purely do graphic design and layout, independently operating sales forces, companies that do strategy and some that do social media work. In Macau we don’t have that. Each individual media proprietor does everything for themselves and that’s a little bit problematic. I hope some of that can actually change over time and some of the media companies in Macau can cooperate a little bit more. I recently went to a Christmas event in Hong Kong for Hong Kong’s senior media executives. There were over 100 people there and they were all friendly, all working together because during the year they help each other and work together almost as a team. They hire each other. When you get a media event in Macau with all the CEOs of the media organizations, there are probably six or seven of us and we’re all doing our own thing, which is not ideal. BB: What role does modern media play in Macau and how viable is it? AWS: Not as big a role as it should play. Obviously media is changing and it’s a challenge for traditional media companies to handle that change. Revenues are down and they are down because user-generated content is a big thing, social media is a huge thing. It is our challenge over the next “Our new magazine High Life will definitely be the most beautiful magazine in Macau if it isn’t already.” From its very first issue in November 2009 to its latest in January 2017, WGM has come a long way over the past eight years. INSIGHTS